CodCon 11 Results

CodCon 11 is in the books! The title was taken by our very own Grand Weasel Prime, Jim O'Kelley. Despite the many laurels he's accumulated over the years, Jim had never won a tournament in Chicago. He took CodCon 11 in style, soloing as Turkey in the third round. It was the seventh solo in tournament history, the third for Turkey.

Finishing in second place was last year's champion, Jake Trotta, while third place was taken by Bryan Pravel, the clubhouse leader at the end of the first day.

In addition to the win, place, and show trophies, some players earned awards for their distinctive play:

Jake Trotta (Round 1, Board 1), for reaching 8 centers by the end of 1903 and still being eliminated.

Fishiest Move:

Jim O'Kelley (Round 2, Board 2), for asking the TD five times during a single negotiation period if his increasingly poorly written "Ven-Tyl" would be interpreted as "Ven-Tri".

Cariest Bear:

Kevin O'Kelly (Round 3, Board 1), for sticking with his ally, Jim O'Kelley, even after being dotted repeatedly, until his ally soloed. Honorable Mention: Christian Kline (Round 3, Board 1), for throwing a solo even though no one attacked him.

After you were eliminated and not counting me, there were three people in R3B1 who could have won the tournament by topping the board: Gramila, O'Kelly and Carson. Throw in Kline, who could have done it with a monster board-top.

At least three of those guys were playing to win the tournament, not to prevent me from winning, and that makes some of their decisions during the game--and the general laissez-faire approach to the resistance at the end--easier to understand.

I'm working on a system to get the pics stamped and uploaded automatically. Will hopefully get that done this summer. It worked for the tourney because I wasn't playing and could stamp the pics right away (which is the key, because otherwise it's too much of a pain to figure out what the turn is).

I'll start my thoughts by again complimenting Brandon. He did an excellent job of running this tournament. Hard to believe he's never TDed before.

CODCon is a friendly environment for breaking in players and TDs alike, but that said, this wasn't an easy con to run. Brandon had to roll out a new Code of Conduct policy and handle some tricky situations. A player failed to return on time after the Round 1 lunch break. One of the Round 1 games threatened to spill over into Round 2. The software crashed while he was trying to seed Round 3.

Brandon swatted away each of these challenges with the aplomb of a veteran judge, and also expertly handled the more routine issues such as ruling on poorly written orders and avoiding familial conflicts while seeding the boards. He was also super organized and even rounded up some fun special awards for the participants. Great job all around.

For my part, I am really happy to have won the event, but I played far from a complete tournament.

My diplomacy was just okay. I avoided being ganged up on in all three of my games, so there's that, but my conflict-averse approach to negotiations got me into trouble with one of my neighbors in Round 1 and likely cost me a better result. The issue spilled over to my Round 3 game, as well.

My tactics were pretty bad all weekend. I wish my digestive system were as regular as my misorders were. I made tons of them, and costly, too. Some were forced by the fast clock, but others weren't. I was sloppy. Fortunately, I rose to the occasion when I needed to.

Strategically, I think I played pretty well.

The one part of my game that was working all weekend was my timing. I waited when I needed to wait, maneuvered when I needed to maneuver, and stabbed when my opponents weren't expecting it.

Timing and some luck are the reasons I won the tournament.

I'll comment on each of my three games and try to point out where I played poorly and what I did well.

Okay, thanks for reading. See you over a board soon, and hopefully a lot of new Chicago locals will join us at Moot! Strike, spare or gutter ball, Tournament Diplomacy is so much fun.

Jim deserves a bunch of credit for the tournament as well. He helped out with a lot of pre-tourney organizing tasks and was there whenever I needed some advice (which was often). If I looked like I knew what I was doing, it was thanks to Jim.